Fu-Yu Chang

medical anthropology, care, mental health, public health, health inequalities

I am originally trained as a family physician and worked in Public Health System in Ecuador for almost 10 years providing healthcare to under-served rural communities. I worked on the front lines during the first 16 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, seizing the moment to ethnographically document how the pandemic hit the ground and affected the daily lives of rural Ecuadorian families. For my research proposal, I’m mainly interested in studying care in precarious conditions by family and kin and also deepening my understanding of healthcare workers--their strengths and their weaknesses. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, I saw it relevant to pay attention to caregivers and health workers' mental health in precarious settings.